Post finish course design

[Jamie]

In my opinion, we're getting into a bad habit of skimping on the post-finish shut down area. Several courses over the past year have demanded heavy braking immediately after the lights simply to slow down to grid speeds. Even at Brooksville, which offers quite a bit of room for a long shut-down run, we've had cars have trouble slowing down within the marked area.

This isn't meant to start a debate about a magic length -- like most other things about course design, it all depends on the speed through the finsh lights, which depends on the course design. For most courses I've seen, though, I estimate finish speeds between 30 and 45 mph, which by most braking calculators means between 100 and 200 ft of maximum effort braking to bring a car to a stop . That includes a reaction time figure that for our purposes serves as the reaction time after driving through the lights (and we teach all our students to drive through the lights!). Given that we don't really want to mandate a panic stop at the end of the run, there ought to be an additional margin beyond the minimum distance to stop the car. If the exit from the finish chute isn't straight, all the drama should be over by the time the car reaches the turn -- the turn itself shouldn't be part of the braking zone. The SCCA Solo rulebook, which is pretty much the standard for autocross safety, simply says, "In all cases, a sufficient distance past the finish line must be available to safely slow or halt any competing car from the highest possible speed attainable at the finish without locking brakes or wild maneuvering," which is as good a description as any, but too often we're shaving that a bit close.

It was also said in the February pre-event discussion that "all course maps are just a suggestion." It's true that what looked good on paper often needs some adjustment on the pavement, but since many people spend alot of time looking at the course map, we ought to treat it as more than just a rough sketch.

[shakedown067]

I've been pretty happy with the finishes this year with the possible exception of February's design and the January finish was WAY too fast. I knew I should have said something or at least questioned it out loud. All the other course designs this year have been technical finishes that had the finish speeds slow and manageable. My spin out around 50mph at Brooksville in January at the finish was hairy to say the least...well at least for me. A lot of people semi-bitched at my slow techincal finish at brooksville in decemeber, but it was a safe and slow finish. I'd like to see the return of the slower entries into the finish. I think this really just brings up the point that we all need to consider our car through the course and if we feel it might be unsafe somewhere, that we need to bring it up. Thanks Jamie. And maybe now, the course discussion forum can be used once again.

[Native]

Finish speed isn't necessarily the issue - it's shut down area after the finish lights. We could finish at 59 mph and that's fine as long as there's safe room to stop.

I know at Brooksville, we've been putting the finish lights right in front of the trailer (or darn close), and the finish chute sometimes ends even with the trailer, and this is fairly short. There's no reason for that. The lights should be 200 ft. in front of the trailer, or more, so that by the time cars get near the end of the chute, and near the trailer, they are already at "grid speed."

SPC is a little trickier, but since speeds there are a little slower, the finish chutes can be a little shorter. A "stop box" as a routine might encourage folks to shut it down, as well.

Seems we've always been of the mindset to use "all available" room for the course itself. Maybe on our blank course templates we need to add guidelines about finishes - it could be easily marked on the B'ville template; SPC, well, a written description of an "acceptable" finish might be in order?

[snookwheel]

Finish speed isn't necessarily the issue - it's shut down area after the finish lights. We could finish at 59 mph and that's fine as long as there's safe room to stop.

Excellent point Steve. I have never been a fan of courses that put a hard twist into the course purely designed to slow cars down to a crawl before crossing the lights. No, I am not saying finishes should be wide open... Keep it fun and safe, just allow room to stop vs. pinching the finish too tight.

[Native]

Thanks.

And since we're talking about finishes - the last 3 events, the finish lights have been set up right along side the course, putting the lights themselves in danger of being hit. Also, the reel of cord has been left right next to them as well.

Please stop doing that.

Move the lights back away from the live course - they don't need to be so close, and neither does the reel of leftover cord. In fact, the cord reel has no need to be anywhere near the course...

[impalanut]

When I set up the lights, they are always as far from the course as possible. There is a limit because you can't put them too close to the other parts of the course when they are close to the outside of the finish. It's also hard to align them when they are in the grass. At the last few events at Brooksville, the finish lanes were between 150 and 200 ft. This should be plenty. I think the main reason there is too much speed at the finish is that drivers are not making enough effort to really slow down. Also, the only way to slow people down for the finish is to tighten up the course. That doesn't mean you have to make a first gear 90 degree turn, but you do have to make people slow down by the course design. The reason the cord reels are near the lights is that there are hundreds more feet than we need to use and the ends of the wires are specific to the lights. If you don't want the reel near the lights, you just have to take all the wire off the reel and rewind it with the other end at the beginning of the roll.

[Miata GT]

I had no problem with the run off at the February event.

[shakedown067]

Heck yeah, February's ending up being the longest run off I've yet to see. I had enough time to slow down and turn off my camera before I even turned towards the trailer/grid. If they are all that long, I've got no issues coming it at 50mph across the lights. I also must say, I really liked having the finish on that side of the course. Just made it a nice shut down area and slow cruise back to gid.

[Alizarin]

And since we're talking about finishes - the last 3 events, the finish lights have been set up right along side the course, putting the lights themselves in danger of being hit. Also, the reel of cord has been left right next to them as well.

Please stop doing that.

Move the lights back away from the live course - they don't need to be so close, and neither does the reel of leftover cord. In fact, the cord reel has no need to be anywhere near the course...

That was my fault this month, Steve. I was lining them up and just left them where they were. But as Howard said, the cord reel sits there because that's the end we plug into the lights. In fact, if we were to take all the wire off and respool it, we'd have the reels sitting on the desk inside the trailer since having a little tail hanging off the reel to reach inside would make it a pain to roll back up. Maybe we can come up with something dealing with slip-rings?

Heck yeah, February's ending up being the longest run off I've yet to see. I had enough time to slow down and turn off my camera before I even turned towards the trailer/grid. If they are all that long, I've got no issues coming it at 50mph across the lights. I also must say, I really liked having the finish on that side of the course. Just made it a nice shut down area and slow cruise back to gid.

It's also a nice setup since we can have the flip-dot display pointing that way and people can see their times as they head back to grid, since the path back leads past the trailer. However, the case I saw this month was that the path back seemed somewhat choked off due to cars being parked in the "VIP" area and the gridded cars on the other side.

[Loren]

For the record, Chris set the finish up about 50 feet back from where it was on the map. That was the only change that was made to the design of the finsih. It gave us a chute that was 180 feet long before the apex of the turn toward grid. On Drew's test run, he was able to come to a complete STOP about half way down the chute.

The timing lights were okay this time because there was little risk of a spin at the finish. I considered moving them out, but on the right side, moving the light out would mean moving it closer to the outside of a big sweeper... potentially more risk there.

I only saw a bad bottleneck at the grid while Wilma was loading up the truck after lunch. She moved promptly as soon as she could. I did notice a few people trying to drive too quickly through the grid. No need for that. You've got 5-7 minutes between runs, take your time!

Solution for the timer cable reels: Unreel the cable, anchor the MIDDLE of the cable and roll it doubled so that BOTH ends are on the outside. Then no matter how much cable you use, the reel ends up in the middle, not on either end.

[Alizarin]

The timing lights were okay this time because there was little risk of a spin at the finish. I considered moving them out, but on the right side, moving the light out would mean moving it closer to the outside of a big sweeper... potentially more risk there.

True, but somebody in the second run group did lose it and plow through the big finish cones on the inside, albeit in a straight line. I'm not sure if people would have been going fast enough at that point to lose it around the sweeper and endanger the lights.

[Miata GT]

That was me, but fortunately I avoided the timing lights.